Audi's new headlights can't find a place in '60s-era regulations

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Being able to see where you're going is rather important when you're controlling a car, regardless of whether it's day or night. It's therefore not surprising that headlight technology is a constant focus of the auto industry. One of the latest steps forward is the adaptive headlights that debuted in Audi's R8 LMX. These use lasers (I'm not going to make the Austin Powers joke) to augment traditional high beams without blinding everyone in their path. Unfortunately, they won't be seen on US roads, thanks to inflexible regulations written before humankind landed on the moon.

If the secret to night driving was just more powerful illumination, things would be much simpler. Brighter illumination is fine if you're the one behind the wheel, less so if you're being dazzled by those beams. The R8 LMX's headlights aim to solve this problem, detecting cars that would be dazzled by its laser spotlights, then adjusting the cone of that spotlight to prevent that happening.

Each headlight actually has four blue LED lasers that the unit modulates to create a focused spotlight with twice the range of the car's LED high beams. The blue laser light is also transformed into a white light with the same temperature as daylight (5500K) by a phosphor converter. The laser spotlights kick in once the car is above 37mph, and an integrated camera system constantly monitors the road ahead and adjusts their throw to avoid blinding the rest of us.

Audi R18 e-tron quattro Le Mans Matrix Beam LED Laser Scheinwerfer

Audi

Audi LED / Laser Scheinwerfer

Audi

Before the lasers (and the R8 LMX) reach those early adopters with $286,000 to spare, they'll be put to the test by Audi Sport, the factory racing team. Audi is looking for its 13th win at the annual Le Mans 24-hour race, and its R-18 e-tron quattro will employ laser spotlights to give its drivers an advantage during the hours of darkness. Watching that race (or the R-18's visit to Austin, Texas, in September) may be the only way those of us in the US will get to see laser headlights in action, though.

Audi has been using Le Mans to prove its new light technology, first with LEDs, now lasers.

That's a consequence of decades-old federal regulations that require car headlights to have high beams and low beams and nothing else. Audi isn't the first car maker to find those regulations have no place for technologically advanced headlights, either. Mercedes, BMW, and Volvo also all have adaptive headlights they'd like to bring to these shores but can't, as does Toyota, which went as far as filing a petition with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the arm of the Department of Transport which regulates vehicle safety.

Further Reading

This is one of the consequences of the differences between the tech and auto industries we reported earlier this week. That view is shared by the Intelligent Car Coalition, a DC-based organization that advocates for sensible policy solutions where the tech and car worlds intersect. "As the tech and auto industries merge, we are wary of applying static auto regulations conceived in a mechanical age to fast-changing digital technologies," Catherine McCullough, the Intelligent Car Coalition's executive director, told Ars. "Prescriptive approaches that dictate how each technology works may impact safety and other policy goals negatively—for instance, by failing to account for—or by slowing the development of—quickly evolving safety innovations by removing the incentive for companies to compete. Instead of dictating how any one technology should work, or picking one technological solution over another, stakeholders and decision-makers should consider safety and other policy goals that can guide stakeholders as they build solutions."

The auto industry, in common with many other sectors, is finding that technology is outpacing the ability of US policymakers to adapt. Years of flatlined federal budgets haven't kept pace with inflation and make it hard to attract people with the necessary technology backgrounds. Those regulators are only going to find their workloads increasing: autonomous and semiautonomous cars that talk—to each other and our traffic infrastructure—are around the corner and will need to find a place in the rules that govern what our cars can and can't do.